Small businesses typically have to juggle a lot of marketing strategies at once while they are getting their company off the ground. They tend to have fewer resources to spare and so efficiency is paramount.
Small business marketing software can help you manage multiple campaigns, seek out new customers for your product, and monitor brand reputation online. In this article, I’ll summarize some of the best small business marketing software available and dive into what it can do for you.
Small Business Marketing Software
- Salesforce Marketing Cloud - https://www.salesforce.com/products/marketing-cloud/overview/
- Hubspot Marketing Hub - https://www.hubspot.com/products/marketing
- Klaviyo - https://www.klaviyo.com/
- ActiveCampaign - https://www.activecampaign.com/
- Monday Marketer - https://monday.com/marketing
- BenchmarkONE - https://www.benchmarkone.com/
- Sendinblue - https://sendinblue.com/
- Constant Contact - https://www.constantcontact.com/
- Maropost Marketing Cloud - https://www.maropost.com/
- Sharpspring - https://sharpspring.com/
Overviews of the Best Small Business Marketing Software
These are some of the best small business marketing solutions. For each, I’ve gone over key features and pricing information; given a short introduction to the tool more generally; and included a screenshot so you can get a sample of the user interface.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud https://www.salesforce.com/products/marketing-cloud/overview/ - B2B and B2C marketing tools integrated with sales enablement
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a B2B and B2C marketing solution used by companies like Bose, NBC Universal, and Marriott. But “big brands” aren’t the only ones that can use Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Small Business Owners will love that they can connect their marketing campaigns, sales tools, and CRM all in a signlular platform. Salesforce Marketing Cloud is great at marrying marketing efforts with sales enablement, particularly if you expand to include their other platforms for customer service, CRM, and the like.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud costs from $12,500/organization/month but you can try it free before you buy.
Hubspot Marketing Hub https://www.hubspot.com/products/marketing - Free SMB marketing tools that incorporate content management systems (CMS)
Hubspot Marketing Hub is a great marketing platform for small businesses because it has a ton of free tools that you can access. You can use contact forms, email marketing solutions, ad management, landing pages, and a shared inbox—all for free. If you love the system and want to upgrade, paid plans include multi-channel marketing automations, ABM tools, personalization, social media help, and contact/client scoring systems.
Hubspot Marketing Hub costs from $45/month for paid plans.
Klaviyo https://www.klaviyo.com/ - Email and SMS marketing solutions made simple for SMBs
Klaviyo is an email and SMS marketing platform with a special focus on e-commerce marketing, though it can be tailored to almost anything. One of their key features is the ability to personalize marketing messaging according to customer lifecycle and/or where they are in the buying journey. Someone just signed up to your service? Automate a welcome email! Has someone been inactive for a while? Send them an enticing CTA that brings them back into the fold.
Klaviyo is free for the basics, $45/month for additional contacts and email sends.
ActiveCampaign https://www.activecampaign.com/ - Best email marketing for small businesses (500-1000 contacts)
ActiveCampaign is known mostly for email marketing but did you know they do a whole lot more, too? They offer many email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM tools all wrapped into one easy-to-use platform. Their basic plan comes with a drag-and-drop email builder, unlimited email sending, audience segmentation, flexible subscription forms, and tons of customizable reports for your campaign data.
ActiveCampaign costs from $29/month for marketing and CRM; an additional cost is required for transactional emails, starting at $10/month+.
Monday Marketer https://monday.com/marketing - Task management and calendar software with a dedicated marketing platform built in
Monday.com was known mostly for project management, which marketers could use for calendar planning, task management, deadlines and goal posts, and project sprints. But they have expanded their offerings to include a marketing-centric add-on called monday marketer. With this, you can get granular about campaign tracking, digital asset management (DAM), and social media management.
Base monday marketer is free for 2 users. Paid plans. Cost from $10/user/month and comes with a free trial.
BenchmarkONE https://www.benchmarkone.com/ - Best advanced tool set for driving sales clicks through email marketing campaigns
Benchmark ONE is a CRM and marketing automation tool that you can try for free. They can do contact management, email marketing, utomations, landing pages, sales pipeline, and offer a master template library with the agency subscription plan. They specifically designed their marketing platform for businesses that use emails to drive product sales. They would be less useful for, say, blogging and information sharing more generally.
Benchmark ONE offers customized pricing upon request.
Sendinblue https://sendinblue.com/ - Best free email, SMS, and WhatsApp marketing plan
Sendinblue is a great marketing tool for small businesses because their free plan gets you 300 emails/day, customizable email templates, a drag-and-drop editor, transactional emails, and SMS & WhatsApp campaigns. Higher level plans unlock things like landing pages, A/B testing, optimized scheduling, and even heat map reporting.
Sendinblue paid plans unlock additional features and cost from $410/month (unlimited contacts).
Constant Contact https://www.constantcontact.com/ - Best for third party integrations
Constant Contact is an email and social media marketing tool that boasts hundreds of email templates, customizable sign-up forms to grow your list, and the ability to instantly launch campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Their integrations don’t stop at social media platforms, earthier; you can also connect to popular tools like Shopify, WooCommerce, Canva, and Etsy.
Constant Contact starts at $9.99/month
Maropost Marketing Cloud https://www.maropost.com/ - Best for small business B2B marketing
Maropost Marketing Cloud is a small business marketing tool with email, SMS, mobile optimization, customer journey data, and ecommerce integrations. They are particularly adept at small business e-commerce specialists with a B2B business model. You can connect their marketing cloud to their commerce cloud to make sure your online store and social campaigns speak to one another.
Maropost Marketing Cloud costs from $71/month (billed annually).
Sharpspring https://sharpspring.com/ - Great all-in-one marketing and CRM solution for small business
Sharpspring is an all-in-one sales and marketing platform with email, ads, forms, visitor ID for audience data, CRM, landing pages, blogs, analytics, and social media management. Small businesses will particularly enjoy the email and CRM automation, which takes the grunt work off management’s plate so they can focus on more creative elements of the growing business.
Sharpspring costs from $499/month.
Other SMB Marketing Tools
- Keap https://keap.com/
- Semrush https://www.semrush.com/
- MailerLite https://www.mailerlite.com/
- Mailchimp https://mailchimp.com/
- Hootsuite https://www.hootsuite.com/
What Do You Think of This List?
As a small business, what marketing tools do you currently use? Are you looking to try a different marketing software for small business? Or adding something to your current martech stack? Let us know in the comments.